Archives

﻿Sharp-Shooting Centenarian

﻿This 100-year-old hunter doesn’t let her age interfere with harvesting a buck.

By Stephanie Salinas

﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿We think of centenarians as fragile folks who spend most of their time indoors, living the quiet life. Roberta Hundley, a 100-year-old Devine resident, is challenging that preconception by not letting her age affect her love of hunting.

Sixteen days after her 100th birthday, Roberta went hunting with her son George at a ranch south of Uvalde and shot a white-tailed buck right behind the shoulders. A perfect shot.

Roberta, taught by her father, Robert Heath, has been hunting for most of her life. Her father even taught her husband, Robert O. Hundley, how to hunt. She killed her first buck, a white-tailed deer, when she was 38.

﻿Roberta Hundley with George Hundley, left, Robert Hundley III and her buck.

While Roberta Hundley has hunted in Wyoming, New Mexico and Canada, perhaps her most memorable hunts came during a 1968 trip to Africa for a 30-day safari.

In Mozambique, she and her husband stayed at the same hunting camp where Robert Ruark stayed when he wrote his last novel, The Honey Badger. They went hunting for nyala (a spiral-horned antelope) one morning with a guide and three trackers, who located a herd.

“My mother said that when she looked up, she saw this great big nyala buck,” says son Robert Hundley. “She shot a .270 Weatherby Magnum and hit the nyala right behind the shoulders. She said she didn’t know how big he was until they got over to him, and the guide told her that it was probably a world record. She said she was so elated that she could hardly believe it.”

The buck turned out to be No. 3 in the record books. For the remainder of the trip, they traveled in rovers and hunted. The locals gladly took the meat from the animals to feed their families.

“She told us that as soon as they shot anything, about 30 or 40 natives would come out of the brush within 30 minutes and take the meat,” says Robert Hundley. “It was amazing.”

Every year, George takes Roberta hunting until she gets a buck.

“She does a good job,” says George. “She knows what to do when she gets a gun in her hands.”